Back to Edinburgh for Graduation!

Caught the train up to Edinburgh yesty, made a presention on my dissertion topic "Development of a CDM Strategy using PROMETHEE: a Case Study of Mongolia" at Edinburgh Business school. I really enjoyed talking about my work, and content after content just rolled off my tongue. I felt like a hotshot young professor from Stanford uni, and the way I answered questions was so confident even I found it hard to believe it was me.

After that met up with Kushal to have dinner at his place. Kushal is now a freelance consultant with Envirotrade on forestry carbon projects, and is in talks with South Pole Carbon on other forestry collaboration opportunities. But behind these industry leading organizations and companies, in reality life is unglamourous, I thought as we munched our way through some Indian-spiced leftover pasta.

After dinner we went to watch some Champions League football, which was bland as the main event - Barcelona v Inter Milan, was not being shown in favour of knocked out UK teams. But it was a blessing in disguise as we headed to a local pub "Royal Oak" famous for attracting Scotland's best folk singers.

It was one of the best moments I've spent in Scotland. A group of folk song/ poem loving ppl were there, each getting up in turns singing songs they wrote or reading poems that had wrote, often based on random whims of inspiration from ordinary incidents in their ordinary lives. But it felt soo...liberating. I closed my eyes as one of the girls sang, and thought for the first time I was really litening to a song. The most special part was that it was living proof that people don't need high tech gadgets, or even electricity, to entertain themselves thoroughly.

Upstairs, local folk singers sang and played the guitar unconscientiously, without a care in the world. They didn't give a crap who was there, what they thought of the music, or why they even came. The artists were simply in their natural habitat, and nothing was forced. Somehow this really appealed to me.

We then went to the Library bar to socialise with course mates, and ppl from other courses. I managed to squeeze in my favourite kebab from the only kebab shop I trust in UK, then went home to Kushal's place, chatted a bit, and slept.